Hanni El Khatib - Moonlight

If you need an idea on what a Hanni El Khatib record is like, it’s best to go straight to the source. “Songs for anybody who has ever been shot or hit by a train” he calls it. “Knife-fighting music” for people who, “if they saw a snake on the ground, they’d step on its head”, or “being stuck in the desert with $5, a knife and a muscle car”. Yep, El Khatib has already offered more quote-worthy snippets about his first two albums than I ever could. With ‘Moonlight’, the Californian’s third release, it feels as if he’s still working within the confines of his own self-branding, which stops this from being the record it deserves to be. Testosterone, blood, sweat and pain courses through the veins of ‘Moonlight’, but without a counterpoint it lacks the vulnerability or rawness that would make this a deeper listen.

If there is any truth in El Khatib’s sloganeering, it’s that ‘Moonlight’ really would make a great soundtrack to being lost in a barren dustbowl, somewhere along the borders of Mexico and the States. Each song is unsettled by El Khatib’s half-cocked vocal delivery, him sounding somewhat like a fever-dream messiah brought on by dehydration, while the slap-back treatment smothering his voice paints him as a zealous preacher addressing the masses from his rock’n’roll pulpit. Hear the big-top breakdown in ‘Home’ for proof (and maybe even conversion).